Milwaukee: Pulse on America’s Shoppers

When The Wall Street Journal set out to spend time with middle class families to see how they shop, we wanted a place that truly reflected America.

We started by looking at which cities had an unemployment rate on par with the country’s overall 5.9% unemployment rate at the time. Back in August, Greater Milwaukee’s 5.8% was a close match.

The metro area, which includes the city of Milwaukee and suburbs like Waukesha and West Allis, is also typical of the country in other ways. Its median household income of $52,000 is a touch lower than the nation’s $53,000. Nearly a third of the 1.6 million people in the area are Hispanic, Black, or another minority, making Milwaukee slightly less diverse than the overall U.S. population, where 37.6% of the population is non-white. The metro area’s median age of 37.2 and the 15.9% of people living below the poverty line mirror the national figures.